THE MUSK. 



PLATE XLI. THE MUSK. 



THE more we search into Nature, the more we shall find 

 how little she is known ; and we shall more than once have 

 occasion to find, that protracted inquiry is more apt to teach 

 us modesty, than to produce information. Although the 

 number and nature of quadrupeds, at first glance, seems 

 very little known ; yet, when we come to examine closer, 

 we find some with which we are very partially acquainted, 

 and others that are utterly unknown. There is scarce a 

 cabinet of the curious but what has the spoils of animals, 

 or the horns or the hoofs of quadrupeds, which do not come 

 within former descriptions. There is scarce a person, 

 whose trade is to dress or improve furs, but knows several 

 creatures by their skins, which no naturalist has hitherto 

 had notice of. But of all quadrupeds, there is none so 

 justly the reproach of natural historians, as that which 

 bears the musk. This perfume, so well known to the ele- 

 gant, and so very useful in the hands of the physician ; a 

 medicine that has for more than a century been imported 

 from the East in great quantities, and during all that time 

 has been improving in its reputation, is, nevertheless, so 

 very little understood, that it remains a doubt whether the 

 animal that produces it be a hog, an ox, a goat, or a deer. 

 When an animal with which we are so nearly connected, 

 is so utterly unknown, how little must we know of many 

 that are more remote and unserviceable ! Yet naturalists 

 proceed in the same train-, enlarging their catalogues and 

 their names, without endeavoring to find out the* nature, 

 and fix the precise history of those with which we are 

 very partially acquainted. It is the spirit of the scholars 

 of the present age to be fonder of increasing the bulk of 



